wooden cutting boards was:Re: SC - Re: Feastware Question

[Phil & Susan Troy]

Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote:

> I actually saw this, it was in Science News, vol. 143. Sorry, dont have a
> date, that's all that's on the copy in our guild files.. The study reported
> that samples taken from cutting boards of various types showed that just
> below the surface of wooden cutting boards was actually lower than the
> counts from other types of boards, including plastic. Apparently, the wood
> contains antibacterial properties.
> 
> The reserachers, Dean O. Cliver and Nese O. Ak from U of Wisconsin-Madison
> innoculated a bunch of cutting boards and found that within three minutes,
> most of the cooties were dead in the wood board, but they were all still
> there in the plastic. When incubated, they grew happily in the plastic
> board, while they recovered no living colonies from the wood board, even
> three days later.

> how's that for service :)?!
> --Anne-Marie

Frankly, much more than I ever expected! Thanks!

Now, the questions that come to mind are:

1) Is the anti-bacterial quality present in all wood, all the woods they
tested, or did they test only one kind?

2) Is this phenomenon found to be active in tests of cutting boards more than,
say, a year old, in terms of active use?

3) In what way were the boards (wood or plastic) cleaned and sterilized before innoculation?

4) And finally, do the conditions for the test reflect a simulation of actual
use, and if not, why are the results considered relevant to an actual use
situation? 

I'm not expecting these answers from you, AM, necessarily, I'm just finding
them occurring naturally. I guess I should look up in the Reader's Guide to
Periodical Literature.

Adamantius

- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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